La Methode Research Articles

Probiotics: Promise, Evidence, and Hope

Probiotics: Promise, Evidence, and Hope

L’incarnazione dell’idea nello spazio della scrittura

Philosophy has often appropriated the reflexive element of literature disembodying the sensible idea from the text, thus exercising a coercive violence against literature, reduced to a simple epiphenomenon of a meta-literary discourse. Philosophy tends to appropriate the sensitive content of literature as a raw material to be integrated into a broader conceptual framework dissolving, in fact, the tensional truth implicit in the novelistic structure as Lukacs put it. Literary experience cannot be reduced to a mere conceptual structure, to a pure speculative form, but must be investigated as a possibility of grasping sensible ideas embodied in the literary space, following a path indicated by Merleau-Ponty. Sensible ideas as literary ideas are given thanks to the textual space as a deforming filter that allows them to be manifested as a singular incarnation, without ever exhausting them in a full manifestation. Literature allows to unsettle the prereflexive dimension thanks to an operative intentionality thus revealing those particular ideas incorporated into the sensible. Two works by Paul Valery, La soiree avec M. Teste and L’introduction a la methode de Leonard de Vinci will be examined to test the emergence, flexibility and irradiation of literary ideas in the writing space. In this way we will try to show the narrative modalities of elaboration of an implicit philosophy in literature as the embodiment of sensible ideas in the literary space and, in this way, as the manifestation of an aesthetic logos.

The Pestalozzi Method: Mathematics as a Way to the Truth

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827), the father of modern pedagogy (Soetard, 1985), dedicated his life to the pursuit of truth for mankind. This quest considered the education and teaching of children as a whole hence, his famous formula of “head, heart, and hands” was conceived not just as a slogan but, particularly, as a concept of comprehensive education. But how do you get to the truth behind education and teaching? How do you teach and educate children? What method ought to be used for this task? Pestalozzi wrote five volumes on his own Method (in Germany), which were later translated into French, and in these, he aimed to address the three questions mentioned above. Ever since the first attempt to explain the Pestalozzi Method, by Marc Antoine JULLIEN in his work Spirit of the Method of Pestalozzi education (Esprit de la Methode d’education de Pestalozzi) (1812), followed by Daniel Alexandre CHAVANNES in his Elemental Method of H. Pestalozzi (Methode elementaire de H. Pestalozzi) (1819) and the works of Soetard (1994) and Throler (2008), many of the Method’s concepts have been discussed and defended. However, the various authors do not appear to have settled on a common ground. Nevertheless, this article aims to offer a reflection on the subject based on a reading and analysis of the texts by Pestalozzi that were translated into French. It will attempt to defend the argument that Pestalozzi appropriated the inductive Method of Locke and Comenios who, like himself, were protestants, and whose methodological resources for finding the “Truth” through both education and teaching involved geometry and mathematics; these were elements that Pestalozzi considered useful for approaching and identifying truth and accuracy.

Des choses réelles à la réalité des choses

Focusing on Descartes’ striking phrase “real things” in Discours de la methode, and on the one of “reality of things” written by Pascal in his Pensees, this paper aims to shed light on Cartesian co...

La filosofía moral cartesiana y el control hacia el ser humano

<div class="page" title="Page 2"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>Este artículo presenta un análisis más profundo de la filosofía moral cartesiana en el </span><span>Discours de la méthode</span><span>, </span><span>Les passions de l’âme </span><span>y en los </span><span>Principia philosophae</span><span>, igualmente en la búsqueda de argumentos que hagan evidente alguna relación de control de unos seres humanos sobre otros, y el mecanismo mediante el cual esta hipotética relación de control entre seres humanos se pudiera manifestar. </span></p></div></div></div>

Descartes among the Novatores

In the Discours de la methode, Descartes presents himself as a heroic figure, standing up against the current Aristotelian orthodoxy in philosophy, and offering something new, a mechanist physics and the meta- physics to go along with it. But Descartes was by no means the only challenger to Aristotelian natural philos- ophy: by Descartes's day, there were many. Descartes was read as one of this group, generally called the nova- tores (innovators) in Latin, and often severely criticized for their advocacy of the new. Descartes himself wanted to separate his philosophy from that of the novatores, who were thought to seek novelty rather than truth. But it was not so easy to distance himself. Many contemporary commentators, like Charles Sorel, put Descartes squarely in their camp, but at exactly the moment when novelty and innovation in natural philosophy was changing from being worthy of scorn to being praiseworthy.

Reading Descartes as a Stoic

Reading Descartes as a Stoic: Appropriate Action, Virtue, and the Passions Donald Rutherford (University of California, San Diego) Although Descartes does not use the terms officium or devoir with any frequency, his ethics gives a central place to the notion of appropriate action in a sense reminiscent of the Stoics’s kathekon. Within this category are included a human being’s duties to God and to other human beings, and actions whose aptness stems from their promotion of the survival and health of the body. While noting these parallels, I also show how Descartes’s accounts of virtue and the passions diverge from Stoic views, ascribing these differences in part to his acceptance of the threefold division of goods (moral, bodily, external) rejected by the Stoics. Introduction Stoicism has served as a reference point for many interpretations of Descartes’s moral philosophy. Descartes himself provides support for such an association in letters to Princess Elisabeth and in works from the Discours de la methode to Les Passions de l’âme. Yet caution must be exercised in extrapolating from this evidence. In contrast to Neostoic writers such as Justus Lipsius and Guillaume Du Vair, Descartes claims no allegiance to Stoicism or to any other sect of the ancients, whose methods he finds inadequate. Moreover, there are substantial doctrinal differences between Descartes and the Stoics. Given this, the attempt to label him a “Stoic” in any strict sense of the word must be rejected. 1 Despite this conclusion, I believe, there remains a case for reading Descartes as a Stoic, or for adopting Stoicism as a framework within which to interpret his moral philosophy. Taking up this perspective requires assuming that Stoicism is relevant to the comprehension of Descartes’s ethics, but it does not commit one to the thesis that Descartes is a Stoic, or that Stoicism is unique in the light it casts on his views. As I intend my title, it signifies the strategy of elucidating Descartes’s ethical theory by probing the parallels between it and Stoic ethics. Irrespective of Descartes’s intentions or his knowledge of Stoicism, his ethical thought follows channels dug by the Stoics. By making these traces explicit, we can deepen our understanding of his moral philosophy and of the extent to which ancient patterns of ethical thought persist in the early modern period. 2 In what follows, I pursue this strategy with special attention to the Stoic concept of kathekon, or officium, expressed variously in French as ‘convenable’ and ‘devoir’, and in English as ‘proper function’, ‘appropriate action’, and ‘duty’ (to mention only a few of the possibilities). The range of Cf. Olivo 1999, who surveys the earlier literature on the topic. Among other recent studies that explore Stoic elements in Descartes’s ethics, see Marshall 1998; Mehl 1999; Shapiro 2011. 2 In speaking of Descartes’s “moral philosophy” or “ethics”, I refer to the views expressed in his late letters and in the Passions, as against the “morale par provision” of the Discours or “la plus haute et la plus parfaite Morale” projected in the preface to the French translation of the Principia. On the relation among these different versions of his moral philosophy, see Rodis-Lewis 1957; Kambouchner 2008.

Reworking Descartes’ mathesis universalis

Descartes-Agonistes is the magnum opus of John Schuster, formerly of the University of New South Wales, honorary fellow at the University of Sydney. Its roots go back to the dissertation he wrote 35 years ago under Thomas Kuhn at Princeton University. As Schuster correctly remarks, some regard his dissertation as an underground classic. I count myself among them: Schuster’s work has been directional in my work on the history of early modern science. Schuster himself prefers to regard his dissertation as ‘a vestige’ of a history of science of the 1970s that he has since gone beyond. In the 1980s, he elaborated and published on some central insights in a series of seminal articles, but his work on Descartes really got into its stride again around the turn of the millennium (Schuster 1980, 1990; Gaukroger et al. 2000). This book is the acme of this work, and grand it is: clocking 600 pages (excluding appendices) it extends, deepens and reinforces his analysis of Descartes into a dense and penetrating exposition. The result is a cogent interpretation of Descartes’ philosophy that is of vital importance to our understanding of early modern science and philosophy. In developing a new dynamical image of Descartes’ work and its significance for the scientific revolution, Schuster has closely collaborated with fellow expat Stephen Gaukroger. They understand the work of Descartes from its intellectual development in intense interaction with the knowledge cultures of his time. In this way, the published works are read as products of responses to and deliberate moves in a lifelong struggle with promising ideas, disillusioning insights, and ingenious reflections on the production of knowledge. This offers an alternative for the usual modern reading of Descartes, explaining his ideas from his ‘main’ philosophical works, the Meditationes and the Discours de la Methode. At the same time, it overcomes the unease of historians of science for whom Descartes represents

‘Animale- macchina’ e ‘genio maligno’: due idee non cartesiane nell’ Harmonie universelle di Mersenne

In this note I criticize Robert Lenoble’s thesis concerning the presence of beast-machine theory in Mersenne’s Harmonie universelle (1636-37). I claim that the paragraph on which Lenoble grounds his interpretation presents, instead, a central concept for the Cartesian studies, namely that of the ‘evil genius’. The evil genius argument is used by Mersenne in relation to the problem of perception and knowledge, moreover, it is used against skepticism before the publication of Descartes Discours de la methode

Escribir filosofía en una lengua sin tradición filosófica. El problema de la lengua en los orígenes de la Modernidad

This article analyzes some of the reasons that led to the adoption of vernacular languages as philosophical languages between the 14th and 17th centuries in France and Italy. The article focuses on Descartes’s Discours de la methode (1637), Sperone Speroni’s Dialogo delle lingue (1542) and Dante Alighieri’s Convivio (circa 1304-1307). The three works not only chose to write philosophy in a language with no philosophical tradition, but also offered a philosophical rationale for this decision. The article exposes and analyzes that set of arguments. Key words: philosphy, vernacular language, Descartes, Sperone Speroni, Dante Alighieri.

Écarts léonardiens de Paul Valéry: l’esprit sensible

Demonstrating the importance of the circumstantial writings by Paul Valery, the present essay points out his very first “commission” on Leonardo da Vinci as emblematic of a new sensitive philosophical reflexiveness. In fact, Valery kept returning to the great renaissance phenomenon of Leonardo, in his twisted Introduction a la Methode de Leonard de Vinci (1894), rewritten some 25 years later with Note et digression (1919), as well in his staging of philosophers and artists in Leonard et les philosophes (1929). The dislocations taking place within these texts outline an emphasis on the sensible, which remained almost hidden in Valery’s well-known promotion of the spirit in art.

L’impact de la littoralisation sur les marchés fonciers. Une approche comparative des côtes basque et charentaise

Cet article presente une application de la methode des prix hedoniques pour etudier l'effet des amenites littorales sur les prix du foncier. L'originalite repose sur l'association d'estimations semi-parametriques et hedoniques, permettant de souligner les specificites des gradients de rente fonciere. / The article describes an application of the hedonic price method, combined with a semi-parametric estimation, to the study of the impact of coastal amenities on land prices. Coastal areas are particularly subject to conflicts of use. We study the influence of coastal amenities on price formation by identifying the variation in land values as a function of distance from the coast. For this purpose, we compare two coastal areas of France: the still heavily agricultural Charente coast and the more urbanized Basque coast. We show that coastal development generates significant capital gains for residential properties along the coastal strip due to closeness to the shore and the presence of amenities. The phenomenon extends inland as a function of accessibility. Coastal development also disrupts farmland markets, including in the hinterland. The comparison of the two areas of study suggests that local characteristics are responsible for major differences in the impact of coastal development.

Total Factor Productivity Convergence among Italian Regions: Some Evidence from Panel Unit Root Tests

Byrne J. P., Fazio G. and Piacentino D. Total factor productivity convergence among Italian regions: some evidence from panel unit root tests. Regional Studies. This paper employs panel unit root tests to investigate convergence in total factor productivity (TFP) among Italian regions. These tests provide an inference valid in the presence of heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence, and when the cross-sectional dimension is smaller than the time dimension, allowing the investigation of convergence among different subsets of regions. The results add a further dimension to the conventional view on growth dynamics in the Italian peninsula depicting a lack of regional TFP convergence not only at the national level, but also at the level of geographical disaggregations where regions are conventionally thought to converge. Byrne J. P., Fazio G. et Piacentino D. Convergence de la méthode des facteurs globaux de productivité entre les régions italiennes: données probantes issues de tests de racine unitaire en panel. Regional Studies. Dans cet article, nous utilisons des tests de racine unitaire en panel pour étudier la convergence de la méthode des facteurs globaux de productivité entre les régions italiennes. Ces tests nous fournissent une inférence valide en présence d'une hétérogénéité et d'une dépendance transversale, et lorsque la dimension transversale est inférieure à la dimension temporelle, ce qui nous permet d'examiner la convergence entre les différents sous-ensembles de régions. Nos résultats ajoutent une dimension nouvelle à l'opinion classique sur la dynamique de croissance dans la péninsule italienne en décrivant une absence de convergence régionale de la méthode des facteurs globaux de productivite non seulement au niveau national, mais également au niveau des ventilations géographiques, alors que l'idée conventionnelle veut que ces régions soient en train de converger. Méthode des facteurs globaux de productivité Convergence régionale Tests de racine unitaire en panel Byrne J. P., Fazio G. und Piacentino D. Konvergenz der Gesamtfaktorproduktivität unter italienischen Regionen: Belege anhand von Panel-Unit-Root-Tests. Regional Studies. In diesem Beitrag untersuchen wir mit Hilfe von Panel-Unit-Root-Tests die Konvergenz der Gesamtfaktorproduktivität unter italienischen Regionen. Diese Tests ermöglichen einen gültigen Rückschluss bei Präsenz von Heterogenität und sektionsübergreifender Dependenz sowie in den Fällen, in denen die sektionsübergreifende Dimension kleiner ist als die Zeitdimension, so dass eine Untersuchung der Konvergenz in verschiedenen Untergruppen von Regionen möglich wird. Unsere Ergebnisse verleihen der konventionellen Betrachtung der Wachstumsdynamik auf der italienischen Halbinsel eine weitere Dimension, da sie eine mangelnde Konvergenz der Gesamtfaktorproduktivität nicht nur auf nationaler Ebene, sondern auch auf der Ebene der geografischen Disaggregationen verdeutlichen, wo normalerweise von einer Konvergenz der Regionen ausgegangen wird. Gesamtfaktorproduktivität Regionale Konvergenz Panel-Unit-Root-Tests Byrne J. P., Fazio G. y Piacentino D. Convergencia de la productividad total de los factores en regiones italianas: ejemplos de tests de raíces unitarias con datos de panel. Regional Studies. En este artículo empleamos tests de raíces unitarias con datos de panel para investigar la convergencia en la productividad total de los factores en las regiones italianas. Estos tests nos ofrecen una interferencia válida en presencia de heterogeneidad y dependencia transversal y si la dimensión transversal es menor que la dimensión del tiempo, podemos investigar la convergencia entre los diferentes subgrupos de regiones. Nuestros resultados añaden una dimensión adicional a la imagen convencional sobre las dinámicas de crecimiento en la península italiana representando una falta de convergencia regional en la productividad total de los factores no sólo a nivel nacional sino también en los niveles de desagregación geográfica donde se supone tradicionalmente que las regiones se convergen. Productividad total de los factores Convergencia regional Tests de raíces unitarias con datos de panel

Fewrige Freystadt: Erste Neuedition seit 1637. Text und Materialien by Andreas Gryphius, Johannes Birgfeld

266 Reviews furthermore, students' knowledge ofMHG is declining. (Indeed, students' know ledge of any kind ofGerman isdeclining, so thateditions ofMHG textswith English translations such as that planned by Kathleen Meyer (see Kragl, pp. 799-800) are becoming evermore common.) In volume IIKragl presents his editorial principles (pp. 797-830), gives a detailed description of themanuscripts and fragments (pp. 830-96), and has also produced a thorough, critical, and lucid-in short,very useful!-overview of research on Lanzelet todate, though he consciously refrains fromofferinghis own full interpretation of the work (pp. 897-1020). Finally, he provides a useful commentary on the text (pp. IQ7 1 I280). In sum, this is an extremely useful and eminently usable contribution to Lanzelet scholarship. UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM NICOLA McLELLAND Fewrige Freystadt: Erste Neuedition seit I637. Text undMaterialien. By ANDREAS GRYPHIUS. Ed. by JOHANNES BIRGFELD. (Fundstiicke, 4) Hannover: Wehrhahn. 2006. lvi+ 194 pp. o20. ISBN 978-3-932324-38-3. On the night of 8-9 June i637 a fire,starting in a bakery, swept rapidly through the Silesian town of Freystadt (present-day Kozuch6w), leaving a trail of destruc tion. One of the first witnesses was a Lutheran pastor, Paul Gryphius, brother of the twenty-year-oldAndreas Gryphius, who had seen his firstpublished collection of poems, theLissaer Sonette, appear earlier in the year.The young poet was living nearby, at the house of his employer and patron Georg Schonborner, and itwas ap parently at the latter's insistence thathewrote a response to thedisaster, published as Fewrige Freystadt. As he relates the events of thatnight inhis opening prose account, Gryphius pauses to lament the loss of private libraries, to take in an example ofma ternal love in a swallow's vain attempt to rescue her young from the flames, and to reflecton the spiritual lessons tobe gleaned from the catastrophe. The textconcludes with an appeal forhelp to theHabsburg Emperor, and is followed by a long poem in alexandrines, going beyond amere versification of thepreceding prose. Johannes Birgfeld's critical edition draws on two copies of the I637 Lissa publica tion (bothwith marginal corrections which Birgfeld attributes toGryphius) and a fair manuscript copy of the text,again apparently inGryphius's hand. It is supplemented by a general introduction, helpful textual notes, reproductions ofmanuscript pages, and a concluding analysis. Birgfeld makes accessible one ofGryphius's longest prose works, a text which has not been reprinted since i637. The edition contextualizes such poems as the 'Grabschrift' for Gryphius's niece Marianne, whose mother went into labour as the flamesbegan todevour the town ('Gebohren inder Flucht I umbringtmit Schwerd und Brand'), and sheds interesting lighton thepoet's earlywriting career. The edition has twoweaknesses. The firstisstructural.While the long introduction allows Birgfeld toprovide very thorough background information, it involves him in a certain amount of repetition and distracts from the text itself. The second concerns the target readership. Birgfeld acknowledges that this is likely tobe specialists in the fieldof seventeenth-century German literature,but he none the less hopes to appeal to a more general reader,who may have come across 'Tranen des Vaterlandes' or 'Es ist alles eitel' in school or university anthologies. To this end, he provides an introduction toGryphius and to the troubled situation of Silesia in theThirty Years War which is too basic for the book's probable readership, and which leads him to unnecessary exaggerations, forexample his insistence thatcomparing the manuscript and printed copies gives insight into 'das fastkriminalistische und iiu3erst spannende Handwerk der Literatur', or the rather laboured linkbetween the textand Descartes's MLR, I03. I, 2oo8 267 Discours de lamethode, which was published inLeiden on the day of the fire.This edition is, in reality,unlikely to find itsway onto the shelves of the general reader whom Birgfeld courts through his hyperbolic claims, but itwill certainly be useful for thosewith an academic interest in the literatureof thisperiod. KING'S COLLEGE LONDON ANNA LINTON The Reception ofEnglish Puritan Literature in Germany. By PETER DAMRAU. (MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 66; Bithell Series ofDissertations, 29) Leeds: Maney. 2oo6. Vii+214 pp. ?35; $82. ISBN 978-I-904350-38-5. The central claim of thisLondon Ph.D. thesis is thatBritish Puritan literature had a significant impact on...

Modelling nitrogen transformations in the lower Seine river and estuary (France): impact of wastewater release on oxygenation and N2O emission

A model of the ecological functioning of a drainage network (RIVERSTRAHLER: Billen, G., J. Garnier & Ph. Hanset, 1994. Modelling phytoplankton development in whole drainage networks: the RIVERSTRAHLER model applied to the Seine river system. Hydrobiologia, 289:119–137; Garnier, J., G. Billen & M. Coste, 1995. Seasonal succession of diatoms and Chlorophyceae in the drainage network of the river Seine: Observations and modelling. Limnology and Oceanography. 40: 750–765), has been developed to describe nutrient (N, P, Si) transfer processes at the scale of the whole Seine Basin taking into account human activities such as agricultural practices, waterscape and urban wastewater management. Whereas the upstream basin is strongly influenced by intensive agriculture, leading to high nitrate concentrations, the lower Seine River and estuary are densely populated. Paris and its suburbs represent alone up to 60% of the population in the basin (10.106 inhabitants), causing large amounts of ammonium to be released by domestic effluents discharged downstream from Paris (of which the Acheres wastewater treatment plant –WWTP- treated up to 80%). The ammonium loading is completely nitrified in the upstream fluvial estuary (300 km farther the effluent outlet), which leads to a strong oxygen deficit in summer. A conceptual representation of nitrification was constructed in which microbial compartments were taken explicitly into account, and the intermediate production of N2O included. On this basis a physiological analysis of the two stages of the nitrification by nitrifying bacteria (ammonium and nitrite oxidizing bacteria) was carried out, as a function of the controlling factors (O2, NH4+, NO2−; Brion, N. & G. Billen, 1998. Une reevaluation de la methode d'incorporation de 14HCO3 pour mesurer la nitrification autotrophe et son application pour estimer les biomasses de bacteries nitrifiantes. Revue des Sciences de l'Eau, 11: 283–302; Cebron, A., J. Garnier & G. Billen 2005. Nitrous oxide production and nitrification kinetics by bacteria communities naturally present in river water (the lower Seine, France). Aquatic Microbial Ecolology, 41: 25–38). A mathematical formulation of the kinetics and the parameters values were incorporated into the general model of ecological functioning of the fluvial sector and freshwater estuary of the Seine River. N2O emissions due to denitrification were also considered. Results from summer field studies between 1998 and 2003 were used to validate the model which is able to reproduce the main spatial and temporal patterns of the activities of the microbial nitrifying communities as well as the levels of oxygen and nitrogen forms (NH4+, NO2−, NO3− N2O). Once validated, the model is used to examine the planned installation of a tertiary treatment at the Acheres WWTP, scheduled for 2007 (a 90% reduction by nitrification of the presently discharged ammonium, and a 30% reduction of the nitrate by denitrification). The model shows that a nitrification treatment leads to a significant improvement in the oxygenation and a reduction of N2O emission. However, only further denitrification of urban effluents, expected in 2015, would significantly reduce the nitrogen delivery to the coastal zone.

Out on the Limb: The Place of Medicine in Descartes' Philosophy

In final paragraph of Discours de la Methode published in 1637, Descartes resolved to devote rest of [his] life to nothing other than trying to acquire some knowledge of nature from which we may derive rules in medicine.' In 1645, with a retrospective air, Descartes wrote to Marquess of Newcastle, the preservation of health has always been principal end of my studies; and following year he wrote to Hector-Pierre Chanut that his practical interests resulted in his having spent much more time in medical pursuits than most other subjects.2 Descartes' sincerity on these points seems guaranteed by a number of facts surrounding his life. For one, in 1633 University of Bologna sought him out to fill a vacant chair in theoretical medi cine. Even more impressive, without ever having produced a proper medical text, Descartes generated a school of medical thought promul gated by Dutchmen like Regius, de Raey, Schuyl, and Sylvius. Yet, in spite of Descartes' own declarations and his conspicuous influence on

NUMEXCO: A Text Mining Approach to Thematic Analysis of a Philosophical Corpus

In this paper, we present the results of a research in which our main objective was to explore text mining techniques in their application to thematical analysis of philosophical corpus. In the first part, we present the software (Numexco) used in our experiment, focusing on the modular approach of the software. The second part presents the results obtained when we applied Numexco to the thematical analysis of Descartes' Discours de la methode and his Meditations metaphysiques. This paper also demonstrates how this computer assisted technology can allow the user to rapidly identify, explore and navigate through the different themes found in humanities texts.

Encountering and Countering the 'Uncanny' in Descartes's Meditations

Starting with a discussion of what constitutes the Uncanny for Freud and the lesser known Jentsch, the essay reveals how both theories of the Uncanny find a surprisingly fertile field of investigation and application in Descartes's Meditations. These texts contain a series of remarkable manifestations of the Uncanny: men posseded by mad ideas, magical transformations, malign spirits, automata and instances of the castration complex at work. The essay contends that Descartes comes upon such atavistic and animistic thoughts in his Meditations as he rigorously exercises his method of hyperbolic doubting, first developed in his Discours de la methode. This is specifically the case in his consideration of madness and of the phenomenon of melting wax. Yet having touched upon, even unleashed, these primitive and irrational thought processes, Descartes has then to reintegrate them into the reasoned, theological project of the Meditations. He does this, the essay argues, by invoking the Cogito; but it is invoked less as a logically deduced first premise than, discursively, as a spell to ward off the various, disruptive forces of the Uncanny intruding upon his reasoning. It is in this way that the Uncanny is encountered, then countered in Descartes's texts.

Elucidating Uncertainties: Michel Rio and the Science of Fiction

Michel Rio's fictions challenge the reader less by their length, which is often modest, than by their density. Put another way, in his case a small volume is characterized by a high(ly) specific gravity. In all but a few of his books, the writing is intellectually charged and often emotionally intense, elucidating moments of crisis for characters seeking to redefine the sense of their lives. To understand why and how these apparently slender fictions are designed to make quite particular demands on the reader, it is useful to take as a starting-point Rio's trenchant view of the current state of the art of literature. Literature, having been the progenitor of many of the social sciences, has by now, he claims, been dispossessed by them, in that they have annexed much of the terrain to which it had traditionally laid claim. In our time it has, he surmises, taken refuge in its last redoubt, becoming 'Ie demier discours du desordre, devant les conquetes successives de la methode' .

EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT METHODS TO ISOLATE COD (GADUS MORHUA) MUSCLE MYOSIN

Four methods developed for fish muscle myosin isolation were evaluated for their potential to isolate myosin from cod white muscle. A slightly modified version of the method by Martone and coworkers (Martone et al. 1986) gave outstanding myosin purity (97.3%) as determined by SDS-PAGE and densitometric analysis without employing time consuming chromatographic separation, while the other three methods tested gave myosin purity ranging from 33.4-76. 75% with substantial contamination of actin and tropomyosin. The method of Martone and coworkers (1986) with more complete muscle tissue disintegration and prolonged extraction steps than used in the original work is therefore highly recommended for researchers interested in studying functionality of a pure cod myosin preparation. 4 methodes d'isolement de la myosine du muscle de poisson sont comparees. L'amelioration de la methode existante de Martone (Martone et al 1986) donne une purete de 97,3%. Les 3 autres methodes donnent des puretes allant de 33,4 a 76,75%, avec contamination par l'actine et la tropomyosine.